Saturday, November 14, 2015

We all know there is a HUGE selection of gay films
available to watch. Many are recent while some began to come into
mainstream media in the 1990’s. But is it possible that the first film
ever to showcase a gay couple was made almost 100 years ago?

A few years ago the UCLA Film and Television Archives
discovered a film that was produced in 1919 Germany. During that time in
Germany, a Social Democratic government came into power allowing
long-standing censorship laws to be lifted.

Acting quickly,
filmmaker Richard Oswald joined with psychiatrist and gay-rights pioneer
Magnus Hirschfeld to write and produce the first gay centered film.

Different From The Others was
a 90 minute film centered around a famous violinist and his male
student. This was a drama that showed a love affair between the two men.
Although the film did not show any sex, it is very clear in the film
that the two men were in love. Unfortunately, the film suffered many
vicious attacks from the right-wing press calling Oswald a “perverted
Jew”.

The complete physical copy of the film was lost except for 40
minutes that Hirschfeld edited into a 1926 documentary about tolerance.

As part of the preservation, the gay and lesbian film
festival, Outfest, partnered with UCLA Film and Television Archives has
reassembled those 40 minutes based on Oswald’s screenplay.

“To use the term ‘restore’ would be wrong,” says
Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the archives. “There’s not enough
footage for a real restoration. But what we have put together allows
people to experience the remarkable culture that existed in Berlin in
the 1920s, which was wiped out, of course, by the Nazis. As far as I
know, this is the earliest document we have of gays and lesbians being
represented on-screen.”

This is an incredible piece of LGBT history. This may be the
first example of LGBT people being depicted in film. This also may be
one of the first steps towards the fight for LGBT equality.

Released in released in 1919 and starring Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. You can watch Different From Others below:

“What is behind all of these games of accusation, possessiveness,
jealousy, and guilt? It is the belief that our happiness depends on the
other. This is the basic illusion that makes us into a slave. True
happiness comes from within, and it doesn’t depend on anything or
anyone. Freedom and happiness always walk hand-in-hand.”